


doesn't matter now it's done

by orphan_account



Series: ghosts in your bones [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Disturbing scenes, Gen, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-09 03:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1966890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody knows what triggered it. One day, everything was normal.</p>
<p>The next, every inhabitant of the Red Keep was being woken by screams. It was a child, to be sure, a little girl, and all the servants, and eventually all the noblemen and women who couldn’t sleep, went looking for her too. To quiet her, calm her. <em>Gods,</em> they said to one another, <em>how can a child scream so loud?</em></p>
<p>In the end, it was Barristan Selmy who found her.</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>An AU, a year before the series starts, where people who have been long dead start coming back to the land of the living. This spurs into motion events that no one could have foreseen, secrets coming to light that threaten to rip Westeros apart with another war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	doesn't matter now it's done

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the lovely song 'Ghosts in Your Bones'. I'm not sure whether or not I'll be continuing this series, I'll need some feedback so I can see where it goes, if it's going anywhere. Enjoy!

Nobody knows what triggered it. One day, everything was normal.

The next, every inhabitant of the Red Keep was being woken by screams. It was a child, to be sure, a little girl, and all the servants, and eventually all the noblemen and women who couldn’t sleep, went looking for her too. To quiet her, calm her. _Gods,_ they said to one another, _how can a child scream so loud?_

In the end, it was Barristan Selmy who found her.

He called for help, said she was dying, before his voice dwindled off. The guards burst into the room, and saw her too.

She had dark hair, and a copper skin, and big, dark eyes, wet with tears. She was about four, but none of them could really tell, not acquainted closely with young children, the last they had known being the prince Tommen, who was now seven years old. She wore a nightdress that would have been too big for her usually, but in this instance it stuck to her skinny form.

Ser Barristan couldn’t have told you its original colour, for it were red with blood where it hadn’t been ripped and torn.

And, of course, there was the fact that he could see right the way through her head and out the other side.

The ghost of Rhaenys Targaryen screamed an endless cry of pain and fear and pain, pain, pain.

**...**

Nobody could calm her.

She wailed all the night through, and the story had already spread - the ghost of the little princess had come back to haunt the Usurper and his court, and by morning even the smallfolk knew. The Queen had kept the little princes and princess by her side once she had been told who it was, and hadn’t let them out of her sight since, suspicious of everyone and everything.

The king stood outside her nursery door.

Bracing himself, Robert Baratheon opened the door.

_Dragonspawn,_ he told himself, _just dragonspawn._

But soon his thoughts were drowned out by her screeches.

**...**

Then, the ravens started coming.

Form Dorne, from the Reach, from the Vale, from various areas of the Crownlands, from the Riverlands and the Westerlands and the Iron Islands and the North.

The ghosts were everywhere.

Some of them were perfectly harmless - washwomen who didn’t know they had died, bards still singing in their haunting voices, drowned children rising pale and transparent from lakes, wanting to go play with their still living friends.  They called them the survivors. It was a mocking name.

Then, there were the pained ones, like Rhaenys. Caught at the moment of death - soldiers choking on their own blood on battlefields, plague infested people will bubbling pustles marring every inch of their skin so their faces couldn’t be identified, babies who died before they even lived, whimpering on the ground where they took their first not-breath.

And finally, there were those who were caught before the moment of death - but only just. But these weren’t like the others - they didn’t know what was going on, they just played their last moments over and over in a never ending cycle. You could see the moment they died. They called those the ‘early’.

They were everywhere.

But in the end, it was a message from Dorne which spurred the king into action, one of countless that a squire came running to him with.

“Your grace,” he panted “you’ll want to see this.”

**...**

The Tower of Joy was round, red brick. The grass outside was red, brown with blood, but there were no ghosts. Robert had no doubt that the wounded had been from a long time ago.

He looked uneasily at the blood a moment longer.

Was that from the veins of Gerold Hightower, from Arthur Dayne?

And then, he heard her.

The blood all but forgotten, the fat king thundered up the stairs, quickly losing his breath, puffing and panting, eyes watering, but he continued running.

“Ned?” she cried, weakly. He never thought he’d hear her voice again, he could bear being called Ned if only he could see her one more time. However, when he pushed open the door, he still wasn’t prepared for the sight that awaited him.

Lyanna was transparent, like all the rest, and her dark hair was fanning around her head, and the closer wisps stuck to her skin. As he opened the door, her eyes focused on him, where Ned must have entered all those years ago.

And gods, he knew she was dead, but the sight of her brother, the sight of him, brought life into her beautiful face. Better than he remembered, whereas before all he had had been left with was a fuzzy recollection - a smile, the colour of her eyes. But here she was, in glorious technicolor - her eyes grey and her skin pale and covered in a sheen of sweat, her lips like a bow and her nose straight and covered in a fine smattering of freckles.

Robert’s legs quaked beneath him. He had banned anyone from entering with him, and he was glad of that now, afraid he might collapse.

His wolf maid was so beautiful, and he was about to watch her die.

“Ned,” she continued, “I thought you wouldn’t come in time.”

She weakly lifted her hand, covered in blood - her blood, his stomach churned - and clenched it in thin air. Robert could almost see Ned as he had been almost twenty years before, watching his sister die and unable to do anything to stop it.

_I should have been here,_ he thinks, and then, _I’m here now._

“Oh, it’s nothing that hasn’t happened before.” she says, as her hand lowers, still clenched around her invisible brother’s “Mother used to say the bloody bed was a woman’s battlefield.”

The world stopped. She couldn’t mean, she couldn’t, oh Ned, she couldn’t mean-

“It took her too, birthing Benjen. Oh my dearest Ned, I am so glad you are here. I didn’t want to die alone, I didn’t want to leave him with nowhere to go.”

Ned must have said something, and her eyes filled with fear. But now Robert’s eyes were drawn to her other arm, that was facing away from him. He walked, as quickly as he dared with his shaking legs, and looked.

It was in an awkward cradle, and she rocked the invisible babe on instinct, so softly it had been hard to notice.

A babe. Lyanna had a son.

A son that wasn’t dead.

A son that Ned knew about.

The anger hadn’t really caught up with him yet, the shock still keeping him frozen, as Lyanna pleaded, and it should be impossible to see the life going out of a ghost’s eyes, but he could see it.

“Take him, look after him when I’m gone. To Winterfell, take us both to Winterfell, please Ned.” she took a gasp of breath, dragging her hand out of Ned’s invisible grip to grip some dead rose petals - winter roses, like in her crown, Robert thought bitterly that Rhaegar must have gotten her hoardes, but they all died, just like her - “Claim him as your bastard, as Brandon’s if you can’t bear to. Anything, keep him safe from Robert, Ned, Ned.” her cries became more desperate as her fingers clenched white over the dead rose petals “Promise me, Ned.”

And then, quite suddenly the fear went out of her eyes. She looked as if she was about to say something, but then just smiled instead, meaning for it to be the kind of smile that split your face in half, but then it just stopped halfway, her muscles going lax, her gentle rocking stopping, the rose petals dropping dead and black onto the mattress.

Robert ran out of the room, and he was halfway down the stairs, the goddamned stairs, when he heard his lost love say “Ned?”

**...**

News came from the Red Keep that Brandon and Rickard Stark were now permanent fixtures in the throne room, and Cersei had already taken the children away, saying that she wouldn’t have her children seeing that monstrosity.

Most of court had departed too, and so Robert sent out the ravens.

They were going to Winterfell, which apparently had no ghosts except a maid who hadn’t told anyone how she died and quite cheerfully made all the beds.

He needed to talk to Ned.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I hope you liked it, please leave kudos if so and review so I know where you want it to go!


End file.
